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By David DeKokReuters • Sunday June 8, 2014 10:52 AM

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Facing wide criticism, including from the National Parks Service, an auction
house has canceled plans to sell the skull of a Civil War soldier and military relics found near
Gettysburg, Pa.

Estate Auction Company had hoped the auction, by an anonymous seller, would raise between
$50,000 and $250,000 from a private collector or museum.

But last week, auctioneer Thomas Taylor of the Hagerstown, Md.-based company said the skull
would be handed over to the National Park Service at the Gettysburg National Military Park.

The park service had earlier called for the skull to be donated for burial in the Soldiers
National Cemetery at Gettysburg, alongside the bones of other unknown soldiers.

The Battle of Gettysburg, which lasted three days in 1863, is often described as the turning
point of the Civil War. About 164,000 troops from both sides participated, and 45,000 were left
dead, wounded or missing.

The most recent discovery of Civil War soldier remains at Gettysburg was in 1996. Those were
interred with full military honors in the national cemetery there, which President Abraham Lincoln
dedicated with his famous Gettysburg Address.

This skull was found in 1949 on private land near Benner’s Farm, site of a Confederate field
hospital, by someone tilling a garden. A breastplate found nearby came from a Louisiana unit of the
Confederate Army, the auction house said.

Katie Lawhon, spokeswoman for Gettysburg National Military Park, had called the proposed sale “
very unfortunate.”

U.S. National Park Service officials believe there are still undiscovered remains at Gettysburg
and treat the entire battlefield as a sacred burial ground, she said.